These are some pretty basic notes, but worth calling out for the benefit of users new to the OCS Deployment Wizard. Troubleshooting deployment issues is pretty common and the logs are the best place to start from.
During the various setup wizards in OCS each step typically concludes with a window reporting either successful or failed results. It’s recommended to review each log even if the wizard completes successfully as there could be one or more warnings worth looking into. Some warnings can be ignored as certain checks may not apply to the specific deployment at the time.
If the checkbox isn’t marked or the window closed accidentally, no problem. The files are all saved by default in the system temporary directory (%TEMP%).
By default Internet Explorer will not allow the active content to run that is embedded in the deployment logs. The Collapse/Expand controls will not work, making the log appear to be a bit light on details. In order to access the content of the log the Allow BLocked Content option must be chosen from the right-click menu on the alert message.
But this gets annoying when viewing multiple logs during deployment and/or troubleshooting, so there is a simple setting in the Internet Explorer Advanced properties that can remove that restriction. Simple enable the “Allow active content to run in files on My Computer” setting and then restart Internet Explorer. I typically flip this setting on the OCS server during deployment, but then revert back to the default when done.
When viewing short logs it’s easier to simply hit the Expand All option in the upper-right hand corner and then scroll through the displayed contents.
But when tracking down errors in large, detailed logs it’s usually easier to skip that and only expand the individual Actions displaying the error result. This helps to quickly drill down to the desired section instead of just scrolling through page after page.
